11-30-1998The National Instant Criminal Background Check begins today.
NICBC is a national system that is conducted by the FBI and state governments of people who purchase firearms. It replaces the voluntary checks on handgun buyers which local law enforcements and state agencies conducted since 1993, according to the Associated Press.
Glenn Meeks, Albertson’s Sport Shop manager, said consumers will have to pay the government about $16 for a background check on themselves. The person has to pay whether or not they are permitted to buy the gun.
According to information released by the FBI, a response of whether or not someone may purchase a gun will be available within 30 seconds.
“If you have the time and people to do it, you can do it that fast,” Warsaw Police Department Information Officer Jerry Laurien said. “It’s logical, but take the city of Fort Wayne. Can you process that many that fast?”
The FBI estimates that the total annual cost of the background check program will be $91,633,397. The cost is based on the projected 6,717,227 inquiries that will be made in 1999, which includes 2.5 million pawnshop redemptions and 4.2 million handguns and long guns sold annually.
“By (Indiana) law, anyone who can pass a criminal background check and is over the legal age of 18 can own a handgun,” Laurien said.
“Indiana has already had (the waiting period for handguns) in place years before the Brady Bill,” Meeks said.
Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department Detective Tom Brindle recently said there is no state gun registration in Indiana. The forms a person fills out to buy a gun are sent to the federal government. By law, he said, the KCSD can’t even keep records on who owns guns.
Laurien said, “We have a minimum three-day waiting period (for permits). It allows us to do a history check. We approve about 98 percent of the permit applications.”
He also said that a person who falsifies information on their application would be deemed guilty of a felony. A person could face up to five years in prison plus a possibility of a $10,000 fine.
“We’ve had people who have mysteriously forgotten their criminal history,” Laurien said.
Once reminded, he said, they usually withdraw their request for a permit.
Associated Press reported that some difficulties will be seen initially with the expanded checks because of volume. December is the busiest month of the year for gun sales, with the hunting and Christmas buying seasons coinciding.
Two telephone centers through a contractor were set up by the FBI as well as 513 people being trained in West Virginia to handle its share of the work.
Teams were sent to brief the nation’s 106,000 gun dealers and pawn shop owners, AP reported.
As for the impact that the background check will have locally, local officers don’t see Warsaw as having a problem in the first place.
Laurien said, “The majority of the people here, we don’t have a problem with.”
“Last year was the first year that (Kosciusko County) has had a homicide in four years,” Brindle said.
Meeks said Albertson’s customers were very opposed to any law that infringes on their freedoms.
“They feel it’s a threat on their freedom,” he said.